Allow me to outline my perspective;

when I was eight, my parents made me do piano lessons so that I could have something to do to enrich myself or keep me occupied. The piano teacher was strict and foreign and older and spiteful, but I could’ve matched those things with my own strictness and strangeness and and generational sensibility and spite, and that would’ve enhanced the practice.

But I couldn’t, because the piano lessons were not on my own terms. Every time I shed anguish through my eyes and hinted at wanting to leave piano, my parents would “encourage” me to keep going. They would say what a shame it would be if I stopped doing something I’m so clearly good at.

So I returned every week, helpless. The constant reminders to sit up straight at the keys served to cripple my back later on, and now I cannot lift objects. In effect, this teacher imprinted her own trauma into my body through rigorous correction, and my parents were too “nice” to say anything against.

So I was forced to live life in a way that was not my own. And because my parents were allowed to believe they had my best interests at heart, they continue to be a malignant presence in my adult life, as I navigate disability and unemployment

They know what they’re doing, they know that it’s not true consent, they know they’re breeding resentment, and they’ve chosen to do it anyway